Welcome to another set of impressions for the new anime season TAY! This one's a little bit longer in that it has most of the remaining shows airing this season. If I missed something you want an impression of that wasn't in the first part let me know below. Here's how it works, at the end of each impression I'll give a little verdict about the status of the show (for me anyway, if you guys have a different opinion, I'd love to hear it!). The status' are: Definitely Worth Watching!, Worth Watching For Now, On the verge of dropping, and Dropping it!

Hamatora: Alright, it's confession time. I love detective stories. Seriously Hyouka may be one of my favorite anime of all time. Hamatora is a detective story with super powers! It's also very bright and has a fairly charismatic, if not a tad cliche'd main character. My one gripe is that it doesn't do what Hyouka and so many other great detective stories do, which is give the viewer/reader the key to solve the mystery on their own right off the bat, without actually revealing it. Making it a game between the viewer and the creator. Hamatora still is a neat story, but it fills in key pieces of information after the fact and that lessens it a bit in my eyes. But, like I said I'm biased because I really enjoy the genre. It's good, it just doesn't quite stack up with other well executed mysteries. Yet.

Verdict: Worth Watching, For Now

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D-Frag!: I was not thrilled with the first half of this episode, it was completely spastic and the pacing was so frantic that what was supposed to be a joke got lost in the set up for the next one. It's animation was sub par and the characters seem pretty one dimensional at least in this episode, the exception being Kenji who shows a little more depth. It gets a little better halfway through after he turns in his club enrollment form and the show settles into a more even pace and introduces some potential plot. It also introduces the only character to get some laughs out of me in this episode, Ataru. I'm wary about this one, but I'll cautiously continue watching to see which half of the episode we saw is the norm.

Verdict: On the verge of dropping

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Nisekoi: Ok, so I was going to be tough on this series from the get go, because I'm a huge fan of the manga. That being said, this was fantastic. For those of you who aren't familiar with the story Nisekoi revolves around two heirs to rival gangs being forced to fake a relationship even though they hate each other. Everything from the voice acting to the animation, to the music is outstanding here. SHAFT I love you guys. The opening sequence was so excellent, and it set the expectations high for this series, it looks like this is going to be my favorite series of the season.

Verdict:Definitely Worth Watching!

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Nobunagun: The other Nobunaga show this season, and in my opinion the better of the two thus far. It does a good job of creating a unique visual vibe to it with some texture overlays that make it easy to see why our main character sticks out from the rest of her peers. It introduces an enemy and a strong conflict in a way that's concise and makes you care about the plight of our hero. It has a slightly insane concept and implementation that is pretty damn entertaining. Overall there wasn't anything I disliked on first viewing! Maybe it'll start to show cracks down the line, but at least for me, this was a great example of how to start off a series strongly.

Verdict: Definitely Worth Watching!

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Onee-Chan ga Kita!: With almost the reverse setting of Recently, My Sister is Unusual and a much much shorter runtime Onee-Chan ga Kita offers an innocent and funny take on step-siblings starting to live together and families integrating. It's cute and funny and I'm liking it much more than the other series about step-siblings this season. It runs only at 3 minutes per episode, so it's shorter than most, but what it lacks in runtime, it makes up for in charm.

Verdict: Worth Watching For Now

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Engaged to the Unidentified: Initially I had no idea what this show was going to be about, and still don't really, which is the main problem I had with the episode, it's sloooooow paced. It's about a girl on her sixteenth birthday finding out that she's currently in an arranged marriage set up by her grandfather. It's just that beyond the fact that she understandably doesn't want to partake in an arranged marriage (and even then she's pretty blasé about it) there's no other conflict. Don't get me wrong I like getting to know our main characters, and the show does a good job of introducing three of four of them. The husband-to-be however is a blank slate and I have no idea what kind of character he'll be. That said the sister-in-law is hysterical. Not sure about this show yet...

Verdict: Worth Watching For Now

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Z/X Ignition: A show about monsters coming out of giant black bubbles and people taming them with mysterious card like devices. The monsters once tamed apparently can speak, and become friendly. The show's protagonist is a boy Asuka, pictured above who tames an angel, Fierte the proud. If all this seems familiar, it's because it's like a mish-mash of a bunch of different anime tropes, and in it of itself that's not terrible, but the pacing and time skipping of the story is so bad that it makes it difficult to really grasp what is going on. I wish the creators had gone in a more straightforward route rather than try to be pretentious and skip around chronologically.

Verdict: On the verge of dropping

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Hoozuki no Reitetsu: I didn't know what to expect wandering into this episode, and I'm kind of glad I had no idea of what it was going to be about. I say that because this isn't the type of series I would normally check out, but I enjoyed it greatly. The comedy's great and well timed by the lead VA for Hoozuki. The three spirit animals from the first section of the episode were the real highlights though, as they turned on their former master Momotaro. The second half was slightly worse than the first, but it still packed enough laughs for me to thoroughly enjoy it. It's also got one of the cooler animation styles for backgrounds, it's backgrounds are in the style of Japanese watercolors.

Verdict: Worth Watching for Now

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Mahou Sensou: Oh my goodness, that was just so dreadfully...average. The dialog was extremely stilted, and didn't really feel like any of the voice actors felt anything at all. It was rather strange actually. Also, it suffered severely from mood whiplash, it would change tone so suddenly that I couldn't get a feel for the direction that it intended to go in. The fact that the script repeats magic, and magician over and over again without explaining anything at all and just using magic as a plot advancer doesn't really help either. I hope that they can change the execution of what could have been an interesting premise, but I get the feeling that this is just not going to be a good series.

Verdict: Dropping it!

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Sekai Seifuku Bōryaku no Zvezda: I'm not quite sure what I just watched, when a show throws a line out there like "lincoln had potential, but his weakness was that he couldn't handle bullets" out at you it's hard not to enjoy what's happening and just get sucked in and go for the ride. It certainly does help that the animation is gorgeous. I look forward to see how this little girl is going to take over the world, but I really do wish she would do it wearing more clothes, seriously she couldn't just take over the world in the outfit she was wearing when we meet her? Just smack your mask on that and it works just as well! Or maybe just a shirt that, you know, functions as a shirt. The strange loli fanservice aside, it looks interesting and I'll probably watch to see what direction they take it in.

Verdict: Worth Watching for Now

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Wake Up, Girls!: This is a show that can go either way in my opinion. The first episode felt almost refreshing in the way it operated, most of this season has been about zany off the walls action or trippy visuals. This in comparison is slow, muted and realistic, it's about the lives of seven normal girls who want to become idols. In that respect it's nice because it's so different from anything airing right now, but if the drama doesn't pick up some it could go from being nice and refreshing to boring. I'm seeing hints of this being great, and one of my favorites this season, but its far too early to tell. The animation is nice, and the one song performed during the course of the episode was catchy, so it has potential.

Verdict: Worth Watching for Now

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Nourin: The other idol anime this season, though it's much more bubblegum than wake up, girls! it's still entertaining in a much different way. The vocaloid-esque opening went almost over the top in my opinion, but it held it together once it revealed the circumstances. The show focuses on Kei, a boy at an agricultural high school, who's a huge fan of idol Yukatan, and what happens when she transfers into his school after retiring as an idol! It's very much a comedy and there were several scenes that had me busting out laughing. The one that had me laughing the hardest was when our main character was running around with a body pillow cover over him and interacting with his friends that way.

Verdict: Worth Watching for Now

These are just my opinions for the show this season, if you would like to read more of a roundtable type format with me and a few others, part one of our series is up on B-TEN.com, our second part featuring shows shown here, will be out a little later this week.